


shot in the dark

by Fleurwinks



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, this took a different path than i was expecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:48:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5540651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleurwinks/pseuds/Fleurwinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is an end of year party.”</p><p>“So,” Haizaki mumbles in response. Nijimura sees how he shrinks away from him, a huge guy trying to make himself smaller against a white wall.</p><p>“So,” Nijimura says,”I’m pretty sure you don’t go to my school.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	shot in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> i love nijihai

Nijimura cuts a lone figure, lugging his heavy school bag through the Teiko courtyard. 

 

"You're actually leaving." 

(Maybe not completely alone).

Haizaki doesn't have much inflection in his tone. Nijimura looks up and nods, arms full of the contents of his locker that wouldn't fit in the bag slung over his shoulder. 

"On Friday, to be precise."

 

Haizaki is a shit so he says, “I hear America has high rates of swine flu cases.”

Nijimura hands are too full to make fists so he says, “I’d be less sick with that than I am with you.”

“Aw,” says Haizaki, “you’re sweet." 

Nijimura rolls his eyes. Being the bigger person (not that that’s a hard task when Haizaki is in the equation), he decides to clip off their last ever encounter (fingers crossed) with positivity. 

 

“Good luck, Haizaki.”

Haizaki looks at him like he’s waiting for the punchline. 

Nijimura sighs. He’s already said goodbye to his friends, his teachers, his team - Haizaki didn’t bother showing up for that meet. It’s a wonder he was acknowledging him for even ten seconds. “See you."

Haizaki says, “Swine flu - it’s your funeral.” 

What a send off. As Nijimura walks out of the Teiko gates for the last time, he doesn’t hear Haizaki’s footsteps.  

That is the last Nijimura sees of Haizaki Shougo until his third year of high school.

It is not the last he hears of him, thanks to correspondence with Akashi. From the rebellious profile he can only vaguely make out from simplistic texts the shock is somewhat dulled when he runs into Haizaki at a house party. Nijimura’s been stuck in the same room for the last thirty minutes. Once he has made sure the girl has 1. stopped vomiting, 2. has an empty receptacle handy just in case, 3. is in safe hands, and 4. is away from that very seedy guy, he walks into the passageway with the intent of regrouping with the friend he came with but

 

          Fate throws spanners in the works, he remembers his history teacher saying in his first year of high school. It is its favourite pastime.

 

but he stops short, effectively causing someone to run into him, because hey, he had pre’s and there is Haizaki at the end of the corridor in all his underage glory. He is taller. Hair dyed darker, in cornrows. Arms more muscular, showing in a short sleeve shirt. Nijimura is good at recognising faces even when they have grown away, in age, in expression, from the pictures in his mind.

His expression on his face is one of familiarity to Nijimura, anyway - Haizaki is disinterested. Disinterested in the two people laughing at everything he says, everything they say, everything they see. A wine stain on the wall ahahahahahahhahahah. Your hair shows your ears hahahhahahahah! Hahahahhahahahah!! Look at my elbow! Look - oops, fell, I’m so - hahahhahahahahahI’msorry ahahhaha. Understandably under-stimulated, he’s looking around - for something better - and finds it in the form of a slim girl walking past, all glowy tanned skin and cleavage. His eyes follow her as she passes him. She looks like she enjoys the attention because she sends Haizaki a smooth smile over her shoulder. Haizaki watches, keeps tracking her with his gaze as she passes Nijimura — 

Haizaki blinks.

Nijimura thinks his night wasn't supposed to involve provoking a former team mate, but it is a welcome contrast to holding someone's hair while they projectile vomit for God knows how long. So, full steam ahead. No apprehension, his feet lead him to Haizaki. The flippancy of  _just doing it_ isn'tfrom the drinks: Nijimura will never feel intimidated by Haizaiki no matter how stylised his hair becomes. There is something so innately pitiable about his attitude. Still making a screechy racket, the two slurring hyenas stumble somewhat to the side, and as irritated as he must be with them Haizaki still inclines his body toward their laughter and away from Nijimura's approach. 

Nijimura isn't having that.

"Haizaki," he says, running his fingers through his fringe, looking at where Haizaki’s fringe used to be. They are the same height, about. "Long time no see."

Haizaki looks up from his cup briefly. He grunts something unintelligible. Interesting, how his voice has deepened. It happens to everyone, Nijimura knows. It happened to him, but. Still. Interesting.

“No greeting. Nice.”

“Hello, okay?” Haizaki says, like the weight of the world is upon him.

“This is an end of year party,” Nijimura continues poking.

“So,” Haizaki mumbles in response. Nijimura sees how he shrinks away from him, a huge guy trying to make himself smaller against a white wall. 

“So,” Nijimura says,”I’m pretty sure you don’t go to my school.”

Haizaki’s eyes wander around, maybe for the petite tan girl. “Plus one.”

“Yeah? Who?” 

“Taki or some shit, what’s it to you?”

“Can you blame me for thinking you’re here to start something with someone?” Nijimura says, unable to resist the easy pace, the tried and true rhythm of prodding. (There is integrity in his motive, of course. It is true that the younger boy often sought out targets of vengeance at Teiko, going to great lengths to catch them unawares. He would maim them on school grounds, in public, or at social events. Every fight was ridiculous, most memorably with a beefy third year who had a talent for saying thoughtless things about the basketball team; that alone made every bone in his body one Haizaki wanted to pick.) 

As if his past offences were from another life, Haizaki keeps a straight face. “The only one starting anything is you.”

“Let’s be real,” Nijimura says condescendingly, “my track record is a lot cleaner than yours."

“It’s been years, man. I could have changed - I could be a new person.” The sarcasm is quite capable of inducing migraines.

“Apparently you really haven’t, if your play says anything about it.” Nijimura isn’t prone to headaches. Actually, he is quite immune. 

Haizaki looks at him distastefully. “You don’t come to my games, so you wouldn’t kn—“ He stops to think, and answers his own question. "Oh.” His face is sour. “Your precious little captain keeping tabs then? Some fucked up kouhai-senpai thing, yeah? I reckon that’s it."

“Shut up. As if - God, it’s nothing like that."

“Well, Jesus,” Haizaki snaps. “How am I supposed to know these things —"

“Hey.” A guy passing them in the hallway stops walking. “If you guys are going to fight, take it outside. You’ll be thrown out.”

“Fuck up,” Haizaki grumbles at the guy’s retreating back. He doesn’t lift a hand. Nijimura can’t look away from his grimace.

“Let’s go outside,” he hears himself say. Haizaki looks at his half full cup, and pushes past him towards the door. Nijimura follows.

It’s quiet, and deserted in this part of the wide backyard. Deep bass increases in volume when an upstairs window opens and someone tips the contents of a bottle out of it, then decreases again when the window shuts and the liquid has stopped splashing on the concrete.

It’s not hard to keep looking at Haizaki. He isn't returning eye contact half the time, and his bone structure is something to absorb. Does he want to talk, Nijimura wonders. Does it matter? He came outside with him.

So Nijimura starts with, '‘I heard what happened. At the Winter Cup.”

“And?” Haizaki snarls. He would have spat if it were anyone else.

“So,” Nijimura says patiently, “I thought I told you not to  _fight_."

Evidently, he is still easy to peeve: Haizaki’s frown is a hybrid of frustration and something non-categorisable.

“You captained me  _once_. You’re not a nanny, Shuuzo, sorry to break it."

The roughness that is stitched through Haizaki’s being has grown more noticeable, compared to three years ago. But his juvenility is still so visible through that shell-sharp layer of bravado and disrespect.

“It’s —“

“Destructive?” Self destructive too, Nijimura thinks. Getting found out by the wrong people could have done Haizaki in - in the world of high school basketball tournaments. And what a world that is.

“How bored are you, honestly,” Haizaki continues. “You used to do this stuff too, now you kind of…govern.”

“I’m not bored, I’m just not uncouth. Sorry to break it.”

Haizaki starts to mimic Nijimura’s words before he realises they were his own.

Nijimura sits down on the cool grass. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Haizaki pause before he sits next to him. They sit in silence for a while. Nijimura downs the rest of the clear liquid and tosses the cup beside him. 

Why are Haizaki’s shoulders so broad, Nijimura wants to know. Too broad for a sixteen - seventeen? - year old. Is he seventeen? What month is his birthday?

“Are you sixteen?” Nijimura says. His mouth is like a broken weir, tipsy.

Haizaki lifts an eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“You kind of look more.” Weir. Broken.

Haizaki’s face is still veiled with the lightest shade of unwillingness. “You still look the same.”

Nijimura says, “I still look fifteen?”

“No, I mean. Generally. There’s no mo or anything. You’re easy to recognise." 

“Well, we don’t all go through a dreadlocks phase.”

Haizaki puts a bite with no real sting into his voice, “They aren’t dreads and you know it.”

“Hm, whatever.” Nijimura scoots his body down so he is lying on his side, facing Haizaki. He partly expects Haizaki to mirror him but he doesn’t move, and the muffled sounds from indoors are all they listen to for a while.

Another cup gets tossed aside. Drink now finished, no excuse to look down anymore: “Do you still play?”

The genuineness of the question catches Nijimura off guard, and he feels the urge to laugh. Maybe he shouldn’t have judged those people in the hallway before so much.

“I do. Did, I mean, ’s over for now.”  _End of the year and all_ , Nijimura hopes his hand gesture conveys.

“Captain?”

“No. Someone in the team was more suited."

“More suited than you,” scoffs Haizaki. “You’re the most grossly worthy person of captaining ever.” Haizaki’s weir seems to be weakening, also.

“Thanks. Kind of.” Nijimura catches Haizaki looking at his clothes - Haizaki never seemed that fashion conscious but maybe that has changed - he is coordinated today, which is nice. Faded jeans and a white shirt that in combination probably make Haizaki think he emanates an edgy band member, or something. His socks, showing under the rolled up denim, are thankfully devoid of marijuana silhouettes.

“But why weren’t you at any tournaments?” Nijimura looks away from Haizaki’s socks.

“I meant back in the states - I didn’t play here, this year. We only just moved back last January."

Haizaki’s eyes flick from his face to the rip at his jean’s knee. “You’re fit though."

“Oh,” Nijimura says, "I do karate.” And he realises Haizaki wasn’t assessing his clothes before, but his build.

“Oh,” Haizaki echoes, and that’s how Nijimura knows he isn’t sober. 

Turning onto his back, he settles against the musky ground and it strikes him that neither of them has flounced away in annoyance yet. The night sky is making some sort of distillation take place. In vino veritas, maybe. Finally mirroring him, Haizaki scoots to lie down and they are both facing the cool sky.

He’s had an issue maintaining focus, eyesight on him all night while Nijimura seems resistant to whatever force is making it difficult for the other boy. The composition of Haizaki’s cheekbones and nose bridge and lips is capable of inciting something in anyone.  _Anyone including you_ , his uninhibited inner voice proffers. His mouth a little dry and his cup long empty, Nijimura swallows. There’s potential in the space of grass and air between them. Reaching out on a spirit fuelled whim, he extends his arm as discreetly as one can do, when its blatantly deliberate. His hand barely touches Haizaki’s forearm - the whole muscle goes tense. Nijimura doesn’t move it away. This will test it. This is testing it.

Nijimura turns his head to look at Haizaki and Haizaki is already looking at him and that's a stuttery shock that makes Nijimura want to face the stars again. He can’t, not immediately, because there’s a black in Haizaki’s eyes that needs time to figure out. Haizaki blinks, and Nijimura turns away. 

Haizaki’s arm moves away from his hand. Nijimura steels himself to stare straight ahead. He hears Haizaki say, “Fuck.” His voice sounds rough, syllable like sandpaper, and Nijimura’s sky is blotted out when Haizaki clambers on top of him. His torso is a heavy weight of muscle and sharp hipbones. There’s a twist low in Nijimura's gut already because they’re pressed together from their chests to their hips and Haizaki breathes out shakily, right on his lips. Nijimura tilts his head up and just like that he’s got Haizaki’s mouth on his, warm and dry and already open.

Nijimura brings his hands over Haizaki’s back like a second thought, closer to his hips than his waist. Haizaki’s legs bestride him and that's a shot of heat, boiling liquor, in his stomach, could foil him if he thought about it too long. Nijimura has Haizaki’s bottom lip caught between his. He traces his tongue across it and Haizaki  _almost_  makes a sound but it sounds suffocated by his throat. All that’s left is the feel of a hum against his lips. Haizaki moves both of his hands to cup Nijimura’s jaw and licks into his mouth with too much purpose for someone at 12.30 am. He tastes like the drink he was drinking, vodka and a sweet fizzy drink - crudely mixed, no doubt. His lips are softer than Nijimura thought they would be, and how he uses his tongue is surprisingly languid, stroking over his, on the roof of his mouth, flicking under his upper lip. It’s with a rough calloused finger stroking his cheek that Haizaki almost bites his tongue instead of his lip, which  _could_  have been his intent, so Nijimura edges his hands further down, down Haizaki’s back until he’s digging his nails firmly into the flesh of Haizaki’s ass: over underwear, but under his jeans. It pulls their lower bodies harder together. Haizaki’s lips go slack against his, opening into an ‘o’ shape. But it only lasts a moment. Haizaki starts to move his body to match what they are doing with their mouths. He grinds his pelvis down, a short fluid movement, heavy denim friction and - again. Again.  _Again_. Better than being drunk. There is the beginning of an ache in Nijimura's groin and he’s getting hard. He only half knows why this is happening but it feels too good to stop. Haizaki pushes down his hips hard and it’s evident in the way it pins him that Haizaki knows how to fuck. Nijimura muffles his sharp breath in by forcing Haizaki’s lips down harder down on his, racing to bring a hand up to pull him by the back of his skull, mouths crashing and there’s a bit of teeth but it’s just hot and Haizaki pants into his mouth — 

Haizaki pulls away, scrambles off him with heaving shoulders. It’s a butterfly effect from his chest to his back to his shoulders. His arms are shaking.

Nijimura hasn’t even thought to regulate his breathing and Haizaki is saying, “I fucked up. Forget that.”

The dark garden comes back into focus, Nijimura's vision disorientated from having closed his eyes. “Haizaki,” Nijimura says. He feels warmth like a carpet burn where Haizaki’s stomach had touched his own, shirts ridden up. He wants to run his hand over it. 

“Forget it,” Haizaki says, with more force. “I’m going.”

“Stop, I haven’t even said anything —"

“I’m not gay.” 

Part of Nijimura is solidly horny and wants to tell Haizaki to stop being difficult and touch him again. A larger part - an intestinal system of responsibility, empathy and something protective - wants to make the restless discomfort in Haizaki’s muscles go away.

Nijimura sits up, feels the tightness of his jeans around his crotch. They are his favourite pair of skinny jeans, bought from an overpriced shop in America, but they go with everything. Except boners, it seems. Grimacing, he stands up.

"Okay," he says. “You’re not, then."

Silent air pierced by distant, far off city sounds. Haizaki stands there, breathing still off passing as regular. Broad shoulders and tensed jaw muscles. His right hand, closest to Nijimura - big, bigger than a girl's - is almost silver in the moonlight. His temples buzzing with something akin to alcohol but not, Nijimura reaches for it, but his hand pulls his body with it and he ends up getting up and stepping his whole body closer to Haizaki. Haizaki steps back.

“We haven’t spoken in years." This is candid - you can't simultaneously edit as you write prose.

"I wasn't in the country," Nijimura reminds him.

" s'not that I  _expected_  us to," Haizaki says, with the frustration of a five year old explaining something achingly coherent to a thick adult. "But thing is we didn't so - we shouldn't."

Nijimura has sobered slightly, enough to frown and say, "Would you think so much into this if you were hooking up with one of those girls here?"

"That's different," Haizaki says, eyes flicking down to where Nijimura's shirt hem is flipped up on the right. Firm obliques and narrow hips; boyish shapes, and Nijimura knows he is thinking about how those are the very planes of sinew he was rutting against moments before. His skin is warm but he wants Haizaki’s heat against him.

"Remember that girl you necked during half time in - what was it, like your second term on the team, just because you knew Aomine liked her?" Nijimura steps back too, even though he misses closeness already. "Had you spoken to her before in your  _life_?"

"It's different, she's - you're —"

“Don’t,” says Nijimura, just for something to say.

"There’s no reason I should - do —" Haizaki’s brow furrows. “Just." He groans. "Fuck."

It’s like he wants to spit his words but he doesn’t have the gusto.

"I'm not.. either, you know," Nijimura offers. "Doesn't mean I need a reason to want —"

"Seriously," Haizaki says, pained, "did you ever like me? Just as a person, even? You hated me. This doesn't make sense."

Nijimura starts to feel the cold as a breeze ripples past. After a pause he says, "I didn't hate you."

Haizaki sits down in a slump like garbage bags leaning against an alley wall. The back of Nijimura’s mind is overwhelmed by the potential he has to operate this situation, the human power of curbing the future - he could say something that would start a night long conversation, or a fight, or an argument. But he doesn’t. Maybe he is feeling slow from the drinks - lazy, even. Or maybe it’s the colours that surround them, all dark green and navy and old taupe wood in the trees. Right now isn’t calling for a conversation. He’ll do it later. Twenty minutes. He’s never believed in endings. So he stays quiet; for now. 

He sits down in front of Haizaki and (like a miracle, Haizaki talks) hears the same tone of sincerity in ‘do you still play basketball’ in, “What do I do?”

How is there a party just twenty metres away. "What do you want to do?" 

Haizaki fists grass and rips it out and frowns at his lap. He throws the shreds back at the earth. "I don't.....doesn't make sense." Frustrated blinks. Dewy eyes, veins prominent on his fisted hands.

Nijimura knows the look of wanting someone else to make decisions so you can't be held accountable for the outcome. Haizaki's anguish looks strangely ethereal in the night lighting.

 

     Understanding can be felt through things other than words, Nijimura's mum told him once. Verbal explanation can kill the fragile connection to a fleeting notion. Feel.

 

He’s sixteen. His face is bleeding shame and his hands are pulling at grass like it’s his only anchor and he’s  _sixteen_. Nijimura takes Haizaki’s hands and places them on his hips. They furl the jersey of his t-shirt like a baby's grasp to a finger. Nijimura leans in.

“Do it again.”

 

* * *

 (Haizaki’s not gay. Haizaki knows by the third girl he’s slept with that he’s not gay.

A girl's smooth middle and wider hips, thick thighs, soft touches and high moans get him off with no problem.

There is a problem when Haizaki turns around at the wrong moment in the locker room and Nijimura's back is facing him, all lean muscle and shoulder blades shifting under skin that looks warm from the shower. He pulls on gym shorts over his underwear and the rise is low enough for the dimples around the base of his spine to show above the waistband. Haizaki feels a familiar flush of tight heat rush through the depth of his stomach and snaps his eyes away before Nijimura's dark head can turn and catch him.

Haizaki isn’t gay, and he’ll have to worry about that when Nijimura’s hands aren’t running up his back under his shirt.)

  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I know,  
> there's plenty of fish in the sea  
> Yeah I know,  
> in all probability  
> you're not the only one,  
> the only one for me -  
> Still I can't seem to shake  
> this sense of urgency. 
> 
> https://mothequals.bandcamp.com/track/dialogue


End file.
